Location Activity: WBAY TV Tour

On Friday December 7, my group and I took a tour of the WBAY news station building. At WBAY, we saw all the aspects of the news station, and even were able to watch a live broadcast!

We toured the entire building, from the offices, to the control center, and all the way to the stage where the news anchors sit during the news. We also had the oppurtunity to talk with Steve Beylon, who is a meterologist at WBAY, about where he gets the weather information from. He said before, meterologists would get a bunch of papers telling them what the weather is like, but now he says he just uses the internet to make his weather report based on certain reliable weather websites that he has bookmarked on his computer. I thought it was interesting how he uses one major form of mass communication (the internet) to relay information to his viewers throught another major form of mass communication, the television.

I also thought it was interesting that right on the table the news anchors sit behind during thier live broadcast, the anchors have laptops sitting right next to them, and during commercials or when they are not on the air, they are constantly looking things up on the internet. You don't see the laptops during the news, but they are sitting right next to them at all times.

Here's us in a picture with Steve Beylon, and a picture of main anchor Kevin Rompa browsing his laptop just before the show was about to begin.

Taking the tour of WBAY made me ralize how important news on the television has become. Before TVs, people had to get their news from newspapers and radio. The problems with newspapers is that breaking news cannot be heard about until the next paper is printed, and the problem with radio is there is no visual so people have a hard time picturing what actaully was going on. Imagine not having TV news when the World Trade Centers were hit. People would not see the devastating destruction that happened, and wouldn't have realized just how severe the damage was. I also learned how the internet is starting to take over the news. Seeing Steve Beylon and Kevin Rompa looking up news on the internet made me realize how news is becoming more and more accesible, and how news stations are finding more and more ways to communicate important events to their viewers.

http://www.wbay.com/